Mystical Beliefs and Even More Mystical Drawings

    One of the things I've taken away from this class is the importance and sheer amount of drawings depicting mystical religious scenes. Every day I would look at the pictures Prof. Brown included in the slideshow and be totally mesmerized by the scale and imagery presented in these paintings that have lasted hundreds of years. Some were more recognizable, so to speak, with long-haired Jesus glowing in a heavenly aura or the fiery landscape of hell, but others looked totally “out of a comic book,” as Prof. Brown said last class. One particular image from an illuminated manuscript featured the hounds of hell (looking quite like the beasts from Where the Wild Things Are) and I found myself reflecting on the mythical nature of these stories as well as the Bultmann reading from our first class that has been in my mind ever since.

    The image and idea of Judgement day is of course one of the most speculation, resulting in some very interesting potential depictions in art. It is sometimes solemn, sometimes hectic, sometimes terrifying, sometimes total relief. From our reading on Gothic art, “For this reason Vincent of Beauvais gave the account of the Last Judgement as epilogue to his book, and the sculptors carved the solemn drama of the Last Day on the tympanum of the great west doorway where it was lighted by the setting sun. History is thus brought to a close” (355). This image description, even without seeing the actual carving, shows how difficult it is to represent stories of the unknown and especially the more grandiose stories in the Bible. He describes the image of Judgement day as “solemn,” which most people would agree. It does indeed mark the end of humanity which is a depressing thought, but most Christians would be happy to be saved on Judgement day, but likely sad at the fact that some of humanity would not be saved. Thus, solemn seems appropriate. Male also speaks of the fact that Judgement Day was specifically non-specific, “Ye shall know neither the day nor the hour,” and discusses that speculation could be seen as impious (355, Male quoting the Bible). 

    This provides a different perspective on the “mythical” nature of the Bible and the depictions of its images; any artworks or stories on Judgement Day are inherently mythical because it is simply unknown. This is the case for honestly every story in the Bible, few people were there to witness the miracles and the direct word of God, so of course things are strung together and the details are filled in. Even if you are one to place yourself in the camp of believing that the stories of the Bible are totally literal, the unknown-ness of the such a central idea of Judgement day means that there is still some aspect of “mysticality” that you believe in. This specific complication altered my perspective on Bultmann’s words and on the whole idea of believing in the mythical stories in the Bible; I would have placed myself squarely in the realm of thinking that the artworks were majority fiction, myth, and meant to tell a story or moral rather than portray real history. It is something that cannot be truly known, and part of the Christian faith is knowing this and still choosing to believe it is true, but I think I have become much more comfortable “believing” in these fantastical images when they are viewed as representations of the unknown, which by nature cannot be “true” or “untrue.”

    Bultmann says, “But it is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, not that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science” (3). There is this dichotomy present in modern thought between religion and science, that one is known and one is unknown, but taking into account some of my earlier realizations they are actually both more similar than I originally thought. There are things in science that we do know for fact that can be proved (weather patterns, DNA, treatment of diseases etc.) but there is so much that is theory, unknown enough to require some speculation (quark behavior, what happens in a black hole, what will happen when our sun expands). 

    This is exactly mirrored in religion; we know of saints and have some of their physical remains, but things such as “what will happen on Judgement day” are just as mystical as “what will happen when our sun expands.” We have ideas and speculations about both, and both get represented in different ways. Some people believe we are due for “the big one” any day, and others believe that Judgement day is as imminent as ever. Both cause people to live their lives differently, and in that way they become much more translatable than one might initially think. Bultmann posits this question, “Can Christian proclamation today expect men and women to acknowledge the mythical world picture as true? To do so would be both pointless and impossible. It would be pointless because there is nothing specifically Christian about the mythical world picture, which is simply the world picture of a time now past that was not yet formed by scientific thinking” (3). Bultmann would be unhappy to know that even in a current time formed by scientific thinking, we still in some ways believe in a mythical world picture. So much of religion stands upon the idea that we cannot know everything, and scientific research has never been aimed at knowing everything and quite literally cannot know everything. Both worldviews blend into each other and become mystical in their own unique ways.

- CRC